May has been a pretty rough month, dealing with some QA issues and other manufacturing delays. Overall, we’ve been able to keep time to ship to time to order for LongMills down to about 1-2 weeks for most customers at this current time, but we’ve faced some challenges in keeping production moving smoothly.
This is our June 2022 production update. We’ll touch on some news from May and talk about stuff to expect in June.
Visiting Andy McTaggart, one of our beta testers
Current lead times
Lead times currently are 1-2 weeks on MK 12×30 and 30×30. Our lead time is mostly affected by when our newest batch of Y gantries will arrive. We are expecting them to be ready for coating by Thursday and come back to us at the start of next week.
*UPDATE Jun 3, 2022* Our new batch of Y gantries have arrived today and have passed QA inspection! We are packing up machines now to ship and should have things continue to go out!
Our mini-saga of Y gantries
About two months ago when we first started manufacturing the new batch of 1000 Y gantries, our manufacturer jumped the gun and started producing new plates before we provided the new revision of plates. Due to this, we needed to recut another 1000 Y gantries with the new revision and keep the old version in storage for use in the future potentially. Because there were already quite a few other parts getting processed at the time, the overall time for us to get the materials down to the coating shop was unaffected.
It took another week and a half to get everything coated, but just as the finished parts were loaded up onto the truck, the pallet fell, causing many of the plates to get damaged. We received a partial order of undamaged parts (X gantries, Z gantries, front and back feet, and controller box parts), but unfortunately, all of the Y gantries were damaged and needed to be fixed.
In the meantime, we continued to fulfill orders with the remaining number of gantries we had on hand. However, at the current time of writing, we are out of Y gantries.
About a week later, we received the fixed Y gantries, but then we ran into another issue.
We had changed to a new process of drilling and tapping holes, which referenced the center bearing hole to cut some of the smaller holes on the plate. Previously, we were laser cutting all of the holes, but we switched to the CNC method to speed up the process and automate the tapping process.
Although we are investigating the incident, it we suspect that the workholding was not done correctly on this batch of parts, causing all of the holes to be slightly off from where they need to be.
Initially, we did find that 1/3rd of the plates had the holes in the correct place, but after doing further checking we found that the tapping angle of the threads was also dramatically off, and none of the plates were able to be used.
Thankfully, our manufacturer which we’ve worked with for the last 6 years has been working hard with us to rectify the issue and implement new processes to eliminate this issue in the future. We’ve also sent a few of the members from our manufacturing team to set up another tapping cart and make a new batch of gantries as quickly as possible. At the time of writing, I’ve been informed that we’ve just finished 500 Y-gantry plates and will be shipping them to be coated on Thursday.
We’re currently working with our coating manufacturer to get this batch of parts to get coated as soon as possible and are looking at sometime next week when we’ll be able to get them.
Of course, to add to the issues for this month, the second batch of repaired driver boards for the laser still has issues. We are waiting on another batch of drivers from another manufacturer that should be arriving this week.
48×30 MK2s and Extension Kits
We have now started packing and prepping the parts for the MK2 48×30 machines and the Extension Kits. We are waiting on the production for the wiring and Y gantries to be done over the next couple of weeks, but progress on those is moving along on time and we are still on track to ship in July.
Parts that are being processed currently include:
Extended X rails
Couplers
Lead screws
Drag chains
ACME locking nuts
Delrin nuts
Bearings
Parts to start packing include:
MK1 to T12 Delrin nut adapter
Wiring management parts
Wires
Y gantries
At the current time, we starting packing and processing the new kits. Once we get the wiring and Y gantries we’ll have full kits ready to go. Here are our rough estimated delivery times:
Y gantries: 3rd week of June
Wiring: 2nd week of June
Although production of these parts is coming along fairly smoothly so far, I am currently expecting the resources for the assembly to be one big hurdle to get through and may make a big impact on the timing of shipments. Of course, we don’t want to delay shipments, but we also don’t want to hand the product over to the customer without proper instructions on using it. We will put out more updates on the timing of shipments as we continue to develop the resources for the 48×30 machines.
So far, our beta testers have been using the extended version of their LongMills with lots of success. If you want to see Dana, who’s had his extension kit for testing for the last little bit, check out the video below:
Wrapping up the beta testing program
We just finished filming our last beta tester’s interview this past weekend. It’s been such a great journey to follow along with each user to see how they grow and learn to use their machines.
Our last beta tester interview will be posted in about 1 week from now.
If you want to see the interviews, please check our playlist here:
Hey everyone, here’s our May 2022 production update.
Overall production continues to move along smoothly and machines are going out the door at a good pace. In a good way, we don’t have too much to report on.
Lead times for LongMill MK2 12×30 and 30×30 orders
We’re excited to be getting through the rest of the queue on the LongMill MK2 12×30 and 30×30 orders sooner than expected. Patrik and the rest of the packing crew have now pushed out over 400 machines over the last four weeks, and are expecting to complete the rest of the queue sometime next week. This means that new orders should ship in 2-3 weeks placed today.
Incoming materials and production
Production has been moving along slowly without part shortages. Once the queue is complete, we are expecting to have enough parts to pre-pack and ship another 70 machines with the gantries and steel parts that we currently have. Another batch of these parts is expected to arrive in about 2 weeks, so we believe that we’ll be able to continue packing and shipping as orders come. After these parts arrive, we’ll have plenty of material to keep us busy for the next 2-3 months.
It’s been a while since this has happened, but we’re now at the point where our production capacity is exceeding our demand, and our goal is to get things packed up and ready to go as more folks get their machines and word on the LongMill MK2 continues to spread.
Some other general news
Our company is growing. We have a couple of new people joining our team in marketing, operations, and engineering! We’re also working on hiring new folks for software development and customer support.
The LongMill MK2 assembly video is being edited now and we are expecting it to go live in the next week or two.
Hey everyone, here’s just a quick update about the production here at Sienci.
By the way, we are having a livestream on Youtube tomorrow, if you’d like to be part of it, we’ll be live at noon (EST) on Friday April 22! This livestream will cover some of the development work happening at Sienci Labs as well as a bunch of stuff about the LongMill MK2.
Shipping
We’ve been working hard to get as many machines out the door as quickly as possible. Now, at the time of writing, we’ve just about shipped 250 machines. Our support team has been reporting that issues have been fairly low and comments about the machine have been overall very positive! If you’d like to follow along on our progress, feel free to check out our page here: https://sienci-upgrade3.cospark.io/order-status.
We’re expecting to keep up with packing as we are currently. Please make sure to stay tuned for more updates.
We’ve recently run into an issue (since April 18th) where shipping notifications for LongMill MK2 orders are not being sent. All other email notifications for orders (parts, bits, and other products) are being sent, and the only orders that are being impacted are the ones with LongMill MK2s. In the meantime, we are sending out the notifications manually, so please keep an eye out for them. We are continually working on fixing this issue, and if your order is showing completed on our Order Status page, please get in touch with us for the tracking info.
We suspect that there may be some bugs with the system as there was some updates that happened around this time. We’ll continue monitoring the emails being sent out so that we can keep folks updated as best as we can.
We are also experiencing some issues with auto-syncing orders with the Order Status page, so we have been updating it throughout the day. Please note that there may be a bit of delay day to day on the status of the items on the page until we fix the system.
Incoming materials
We’ve now reached the first 500 machines sold for Batch 6, which means that we are now about a third of the way through. We currently are stocking 1500 machines worth of parts, with the exception of the rails and the gantries. We initially ordered 500 sets of rails and gantries to start the batch and we’ve placed another batch of those parts to come in soon.
Materials for rails which were slated for early June arrival have been completed early and are expected to be delivered to us soon. Some will be here tomorrow and some will be here next week. This also covers the rails we need for the 48×30 machines and extension kits, which means that we’ll be starting prepping and cutting for those orders as well.
Gantry plates and feet are in production currently, and we are expecting all of them to be cut, formed, and painted at the start to middle of May. Once those parts are available, these parts will be used for machines for the next 500 units.
Initially, we were expecting to start shipping machines after the first 500 in June, but it looks like we’ll be able to chug along with production without interruptions.
I’m happy to announce that the LongMill MK2s are now shipping! We received our container last week and have started shipping since. Here’s some customer feedback from one of the first people to pick it up:
MK2 Production
At this current time, we now have enough materials on hand to ship around 500 machines. Our team continues to pack and assemble kits as quickly as we can. At the time of writing, we’ve gotten 48 machines shipped out since last Thursday.
For general updates on where your order is on the list, please see our Order Status page. An estimated time for shipping can also be found on the page. We are aiming to average around 50 machines shipped per week. Please note that this number can vary a lot depending on staff availability and production schedules. Please also note that this is an average we are shooting for, but the number may vary day-to-day, as some days we may be able to ship more than others. Because of this, we cannot provide exact dates on when machines will ship for each order, but an email will be sent the week before your order is ready to ship to let you prepare and let you know that things are heading your way.
I’ve updated the estimated time to completion on our Order Status page to reflect our expected delivery times. Please make sure to check it out for our latest estimate on when your machine will ship.
We are expecting the first week to be a little bit slower and for things to pick up as we keep packing since some of our new packing material which was designed to improve our packing speed has not arrived yet and we are using general off-the-shelf material in the meantime. The new packing material is expected to arrive this week, but it has previously been pushed back a few times and it hasn’t been clear the exact delivery date due to cardboard shortages.
Materials
We now currently have the material needed to build the next 500ish machines, which means that we have everything we need to cover all of the machines in queue currently. We are still waiting on some additional packing material to arrive, but for the time being, we’ve substituted final production packaging with some off-the-shelf materials we were able to use in the meantime.
After the first 500 units, we’ll be waiting on another batch of gantries and rails to arrive, which is expected to arrive between the end of April and the start of June. The arrival of these materials is likely to affect our lead times down the line.
Purchasing for materials for Batch 7 has also started, which should put us around August-September when we’ll start Batch 7.
LaserBeam
Power supplies and heatsinks for the LaserBeam have arrived, and we are currently packing and assembling kits. Here’s one of our staff putting together the laser and heatsinks.
We’re expecting to start shipping the kits out at the end of the week this week or the start of next week. Ikenna is waiting on Bittele to wrap up the PCB assembly to finish up the drivers on Thursday. There were some delays due to chip and parts shortages for the assembly, but the boards have started fabrication last week. We’ll have around 400 new drivers arriving to wrap up the production for the rest of the LaserBeams.
Other general updates
Chris has made a lot of progress in the assembly instructions for the MK2 machines. Make sure to check it out in the resources. Thank you Aleks for being part of this project as well!
I also wanted to share some pics of the new power supply:
You can see that when you cut it open (I used an angle grinder), it is completely encapsulated. Although this is pretty overkill, this construction will basically make the power supply impervious to dust and moisture.
Did you see our April Fools video?
Ikenna initially suggested the idea of making a lasergun using the LaserBeam. I thought that it was a great idea so I put one together.
Assembly of the Not-a-LaserGun
The Not-a-LaserGun was partially inspired also by the Not-a-Flamethrower, which was a flamethrower created by Elon Musk.
Basically, the Not-a-LaserGun takes the LaserBeam diode assembly and driver assembly and replaces the power supply with a 12V 8A battery to allow the user to use the laser on battery power. Everything was then put into a case that was 3D printed in multiple parts. An Arduino was used to generate an on-signal when the trigger is fired.
The result of this was basically a super-powerful laser pointer that can burn stuff.
Extension Kits and MK2 48x30s
We now have three people with the extension kits. Dale, Garrett, and Dana. These guys also all have MK2 machines as well, so they will be able to compare the MK1 and MK2 as well. So far, the response has been very positive, with very few issues with the overall setup. There are a few kinks to work out however which include
Proper defaults and integration on gSender
Testing and finalizing designs for wire management
Instructions and other resources for assembly and use
We’ve asked our users and testers to start extending their MK1 machines since…well this is what I said:
We also just got in the aluminum part to adapt the new T12 nuts for the T8 spacing (used on the MK1 machines).
Please keep an eye out for further development updates and other feedback!
Hey everyone, this is an update for this month’s production update, covering the status of some of the parts that we are waiting on to have come in as well as other details.
If you’re learning about the LongMill MK2 for the first time, please check out this post for more info.
We now have a definitive answer on when the power supplies we need to start shipping LaserBeams and LongMills again will be arriving to us. The container of parts and materials has been loaded onto the train this past weekend (March 19) and are expected to arrive in Brampton at the end of the week (March 25). Unloading to the warehouse can take between a few days up to two weeks. So we are conservatively estimating that the first units will start shipping at the start of April.
When will the LongMill MK2s start shipping? The saga of delayed container MAGU5348230
The last time we had a “saga” was back when we were scrambling to figure out the v-wheel situation. 2021 and 2022 shipping delays, especially for that last batch of parts have been another epic saga in itself.
Around June last year, we started Batch 5. Knowing the current world situation with COVID and everything, we started production on Batch 6 in the first quarter part of the production of Batch 5. This was the earliest we ever started sourcing parts for a batch, as we typically wait for the middle of the batch to start ordering parts. Batch 6 is also the largest batch we’ve ever created, as we wanted to hedge having part shortages by keeping more inventory on hand. With the majority of parts produced for Batch 6 being produced between August and December of last year, we expected to have a lot of buffer between each batch.
Well, then things went gangbusters from August to the start of this year, throwing our projection that we were going to run out of machines at the start of 2022 straight out the window. Instead, we ran out of LongMills sometime in December.
Given that we saw this upward trend happening, we had ordered as much stuff as we could early in advance. But there were a couple of minor issues. One of the biggest that is having repercussions now would be the chip shortage.
Due to the chip shortage, our regular suppliers for power supplies were 1) significantly increasing their prices 2) had an extremely long lead time that couldn’t deliver on schedule for our production. It was also uncertain if the power supplies could even be made, as the estimates we were getting relied on whether the chips would actually come back in stock again. With this going on, we started vetting and testing power supplies from other suppliers. For many producers, it was a similar story of very high prices and being unable to ship quickly due to the lack of chips.
Luckily we were able to work out the production for the power supplies with another manufacturer that was able to provide a high-quality product with the proper certifications and also have everything completed and ready to ship by December 1, 2021. Materials were picked up from the factory and prepped for transport on a cargo ship.
Although it was cutting it tight, we let customers know that we were expecting to start shipping LongMills in February to end of March, which would have given us just about 4 months to wait for the arrival of the power supplies. Back before the pandemic, ocean shipping speeds were fairly consistent and reliable, typically taking around 6 weeks for materials to arrive from China. Most delays, if any would generally be with loading and unloading, as sometimes things would get held up with customs or waiting for the next ship to arrive. During the pandemic, we saw shipping times shoot up to 8 weeks, and near the end of 2021, get to 12 weeks.
The estimated time that the power supplies and other parts would be arriving was January 30th initially, and we first set up our timelines based on this initial estimate. However, that has shifted due to delays in shipping. There were a couple things we believe caused these delays.
First was the aggregation of three other shipments that were getting sent here from China. We had two other shipments that were leaving from the same shipping company. We suspect that the shipper aggregated them together to save costs, rather than creating three separate shipments. Although when done properly, this does not affect the shipping time and usually is a win-win for both parties if the savings are passed onto us as well, combining shipments generally creates longer shipping times as each batch of cargo needs to wait on each other and can cause customs complications. Because of this, we never ask our shippers to combine cargo, and this was done without our consent.
Unfortunately, if we were to cancel the shipment, the time it would have taken to rebook shipments would offset any potential time savings for the shipment, so we had to go ahead with the current shipment.
Next was the trajectory of APL Vancouver, the cargo ship our stuff was on. Cargo ships can either make a straight trip from one port to another, and some will pick up and drop off cargo from multiple ports. In this case, it was the latter. Due to port congestion happening in many ports, this also added total transit time for our shipment. We weren’t aware of this until it was halfway across the ocean as well.
And lastly, general port congestion in Prince Rupert and on the rail system further delayed the shipment. According to Vanterm, the location that the container finally arrived at in Canada, there have been railcar shortages delaying containers from moving out of the rail terminal. Although our shipment arrived on Feb 13, 2022, it had been sitting waiting for rail cars to arrive for over 4 weeks.
So where does that leave us now? We now have confirmation that the shipment is now on rail and is expected to arrive on March 25th. Once the cargo arrives in Brampton, which is where the next railyard is, it will be unloaded and placed in a warehouse for pickup. Then we can arrange a truck to pick our shipment up and we’ll have everything ready to go for shipping.
Based on estimates from the shipping company, it takes roughly two days for unloading the train and two days for it to arrive at the warehouse. We are working on arrangements for a truck to go pick up the parts now so that it will be here the same day it is released.
So in regards to everything else, once we have those power supplies, we can start shipping. We have all of the other parts here to start shipping (minus some final packing materials), so we’ve been packing and prepping everything to go as soon as possible. As Kye (inventory manager) would say…
I’m glad that the saga is coming to an end. In hindsight, there could have been a couple of things we could have done and a few things we learned. One of them would have been to express ship a small batch from the original batch of parts to have them on hand as an emergency. Second would have been to get more visability on the status of the shipment. One of the problems was that on the system, it was showing that our stuff would be arriving on time, but that was because our operator was not updating the system. We needed to find info out about the shipments by calling or emailing directly. If we were aware of the delays earlier, we may have been able to react faster and make other arrangements.
Status of materials
Front and back feet
In our last update, we talked about parts that were expected to arrive on the week of March 7th. I’m happy to announce that these parts have now arrived and are being packed and assembled:
X, Y, Z gantries
Dust shoe brackets
Drag chain brackets
Dust shields
V-wheels
Cables
Assorted packaging
3D printer filament
Inductive sensors
Here are the parts that we are still waiting on:
Power supplies (1-3 weeks)
Dust shoe boxes (this week)
Rail boxes (this week)
Production and assembly
We’ve been making good headway into production and assembly, and materials needed to ship the first batch of machines that we have on hand have now been pre-packed.
Future lead times
Once container MAGU5348230 arrives, we will have 1500 or more units worth of components for the LongMill MK2 12×30 and 30×30 with some exceptions. The two major parts that will be our next bottlenecks are likely to be the aluminum extrusion and the steel parts (gantries, drag chain mounts, feet). Both the rails and steel parts were made at 500 units worth, so we can make tweaks to these parts after the first batch.
Even with delays, sales have continued to be strong. We currently have around 400 units accounted for, and are expecting 500 units sold in the next couple of weeks.
Currently, another batch of rails is expected to ship in early June for another 500 units. We may be looking at extending lead times once we sell the first 500 LongMills as we may be waiting for the next batch of rails to arrive. Almag has been good at getting things shipped out on time or early so there is a chance we might get these parts earlier.
Steel parts are now starting production. We’ve given the go-ahead for some parts that don’t need changes, but we are expecting to finish the tweaks this week. Nithside, our manufacturer for the steel parts has told us that they are shooting to finish the batch this time within 3 weeks, as they were able to streamline some of their processes during the last batch. Total turnaround time with cutting, forming, and coating is expected to be around 6 weeks.
Once we are a bit further into the production, we’ll update our pages with new lead times.
LaserBeam
I talked with Ikenna about the status of the pending LaserBeam orders. We were able to ship some once we had more power cables arrive, but we are now waiting on copper heatsinks and power adapters to arrive to complete the production. The parts that we need for shipping are in container MAGU5348230, so we are facing the same delays as the power supplies for the LongMills.
We are currently producing and stockpiling parts and assemblies for the driver enclosure and shields, and we also have received another batch of laser goggles, fans, and lenses to cover for the next batch.
LongMill MK2 48×30 and Extension Kits
We’ve now received the:
T12 lead screws
6001 Flange Bearings
T12 Delrin nuts
T12 ACME nuts
Longer drag chains
To get prepped for shipping, we still need to get:
Extension cables and wiring
Y gantry plates
MK1 to MK2 Delrin nut adapter
We just received our sample batch of extension cables. These will let our customers extend the length of the motor cables and inductive sensors. One they have been checked and tested, we’ll order a batch. We’ll also sell these on the store as extras so that customers can extend their cables if they need.
I’ve been using our 48×30 machine here and it’s been great! Currently, it’s just been used for general projects both large and small. Here’s a subwoofer box that I was working on for my car.
One thing I realized that was actually super handy about the 48in width was the fact that I didn’t need to cut any material down to fit the machine. All I did was put some half sheets of MDF that we had on hand, and just moved the mounting for the material down the middle, so I could just reposition the material to the area I wanted to cut.
I also put together a prototype machine for the MK1 to MK2 extension kits. At first I had a lot of issues with it, as it was getting stuck in travel, but it turned out that I had used a bad batch of prototype plates that had offset the bearing spacing by 3mm, causing the machine to bind. Replacing them has fixed the issue.
We are now starting to work with our beta testers to get the larger machines in their hands. The first two beta testers will receive their machines this week. Watch out for more news!
Hey everyone, here’s the latest production update. For previous updates, please read our blog.
Folks doing projects and testing in the workshop
Materials are arriving
We’ve received a large number of materials over the last couple of weeks including some of the steel parts, power and USB cables, packaging, dust shoe parts, end mills, and more. We’ve made good progress doing the packing and processing, with most of the materials we’ve gotten in prepared for shipping once we receive everything.
We’re also expecting 3D printing filament, gantries, control boards, and other steel parts, and v-wheels to arrive any day now, as transport has been booked and are awaiting delivery this week.
Waiting on materials to arrive
We continue to wait on the shipment of power supplies for the LongMill and LaserBeam and other parts that arrived on Feb 13 at Prince Rupert. Due to rail congestions, we are still waiting on these parts to arrive. According to our updated tracking info, it is expected to arrive in the next two weeks. However, due to the uncertainty with when these parts will be moved onto rail, as well as potential transit time for truck freight from the Mississauga warehouse, we would advise customers that this shipment may not reach our shop until the end of the month.
We are frustrated with the delays in these shipments, as this shipment was expected to arrive at the end of January. We are hoping that these items will arrive soon, and in the meantime, we are doing our best to pre-pack as much as we can so that we can ship machines out as quickly as we can when they do.
By the end of this week, we are expecting to have all of the materials ready to ship the MK2s with the exception of the power supplies, which will be our biggest bottleneck.
Given these delays, for new orders placed today and onwards, customers should expect to receive their machines in April/May.
Packing progress
Rails ready to ship
We’ve been processing materials as they come in. Most of the day-to-day packing isn’t super interesting but we did make a small modification to the printers in our print farm that some folks might find interesting. With the new MK2 dust shoes, the height of the hose comes out to be around 196mm. Unfortunately, the printing height of the Prusa Minis we have in the farm, which make up the majority of the printers we have, only print up to 185mm. Initially, we printed the hoses on some of the other printers we have in the farm, we weren’t able to keep up with the number of hoses we needed to print. So, we had the brilliant idea to just make the Prusa Minis a little bit taller. After making a small simple spacer, we’re now able to print the dust shoe hoses on the Prusa Minis!
Now with 6 of our printers converted, we can now print up to 18 dust shoe hoses per day, meaning that we should be caught up with the printing in the next two to three weeks.
We’re also excited to get our 3KG filament spools to replace the 1KG spools, which means that we’ll be able to reduce the number of filament changeovers by 2/3rds, improving our printing efficiency and the amount of manpower it takes to run the farm.
Assembling dust shoe hoses
Dimensioned drawings are now updated for all LongMill MK2s.
We’ve now updated the dimensioned drawings for all of the LongMill MK2s to include the 48×30 as well as overall width and heights of the machine so that customers can prep their work areas, enclosures, and tables.
Chris and Aleks have been hard at work making the new instruction manual and working with our staff and beta testers to perfect the assembly manual. We’re excited to share a final draft of the MK2 assembly instructions. Please note that there are still some minor updates that we need to make to finalize the manual, including making a compressed version (right now the PDF is 107MB large) and updating links for the add-ons, but we just wanted to share this with everyone to get thoughts and feedback, as well as people can get an idea on what the assembly process for the MK2s are going to look like.
New batches of drivers and other components are currently in production. We are experiencing delays with driver manufacturing as we need to adapt to component and chip shortages. Based on these supply chain issues, customers are advised to expect delays when ordering the LaserBeam. We are also waiting on power supplies and copper heatsink housing parts to arrive with the large shipment delayed in Prince Rupert to arrive to complete currently pending orders.
While we wait on parts to arrive, we’ve completed the wiring and have been assembling other parts, such as the air assist and driver housing components to prepare for the arrival of the parts.
We have pushed orders that were scheduled to ship end of Feburary to end of March, and we are advising a 8 week lead time for new orders.
Hey everyone, here’s our February production update.
For previous production updates and other company news, feel free to check out our blog.
First batch of LongMill MK2 boxes
COVID 19 – another wave passes
COVID19 numbers in Waterloo ON.
COVID 19 hit us hard in January, with several of our staff, including myself, contracting the virus. This meant that many of us were off work or working from home. With the nature of our work being fairly hands-on, it took a bit of time to adapt, but luckily this wave has passed and everyone is back to work. Thankfully, symptoms for everyone were fairly mild and I am happy that everyone is ok.
General production updates
This past month has been especially hectic as we work to scale our business and production. The first area of growth is in our team, with us onboarding six new employees and two co-op engineering students over the last month and a half. By increasing the size of our team, we hope to be able to pack and ship products faster, keep a closer eye on quality control, and improve the speed and quality of our customer and technical support.
Our second area of growth is in our space and capacity. Although we are in the same space, we added two shipping containers for outside storage and also had a forklift delivered to the shop today. We are limited by space inside, but we’ll be able to move some of the materials outside in the parking lot, such as 3D printer filament, aluminum rails, and motors, that are not affected by the cold and take up a lot of space.
Sea cans and forklift
In the long term, I feel that we’ll have to expand to a new space. Given the growing number of products, staff, and items we have to house, we’ve reached the capacity our current space can offer. This will be something we’ll be looking at doing over the next year.
As has been the common theme for the two years, we continue to struggle through supply chain issues and shipping delays. Many of the parts that we were expecting at the end of January have now been postponed into February. This to some degree will affect the shipping time for some of our items. More info about parts delays will be included below.
LongMill MK1 Production
We’ve been making good progress in shipping the last of the LongMills in Batch 5 and have around 50 machines remaining. We are planning to have another 20 machines shipped this week, but we may be affected by snow, as we’ve received a weather warning that there will be 15-20cm of snowfall. We’re providing staff work that can be done from home, but the number of machines we ship this week may be affected by the weather.
At the time of writing, we have a new supply bottleneck, the power supplies. Another batch of power supplies was expected to be delivered at the end of January. However, we’ve been notified that the shipment has been delayed until the end of February to the start of March. Currently, we have enough power supplies to ship the rest of the machine for this week, but the last 10-15 orders will have to wait until we get more. I will be working with our suppliers to possibly expedite another batch of parts to finish with the rest of the orders.
LongMill MK2 Production
We continue to wait for parts to arrive for the LongMill MK2. We now have a portion of the materials needed for MK2 production, but some parts, including power supplies, gantries, inside packaging, cables, and a few other things are still in transport and are expected to arrive this month.
Email updates from the shipping companyContainer tracking
Given the current status of the shipments, we expect that MK2 will ship closer to the middle to end of March at this point. Based on the estimated arrival dates, it appears that the power supplies are likely to be the last set of parts to arrive. We’ll be contacting our suppliers to see if it is possible to expedite a second batch as well so that we can possibly ship machines earlier.
We are now packing and assembling sub-components of the kit, including spacers, couplers, v-wheels, printed feet, lead screws, drag chains, and more in preparation for shipping of the MK2.
LaserBeam Production
We are now packing, assembling, and packing LaserBeams for orders placed in November, and have currently shipped around 300 units. Ikenna and the rest of our team continue to develop new resources for the LaserBeam system in the resources.
We are now waiting for new drivers and power supplies to arrive to ship orders placed between November and January and are scheduled to ship at the end of February. New orders placed today and onwards are expected to ship by the end of March.
LongMill MK2 48×30 and Extension kits
Our first half of parts for the 48in X-axis for the LongMill MK2 are on the way and are expected to arrive in the next two weeks. We will be testing and checking the parts to make sure that they are to spec and work correctly. Once the testing is complete and all the parts work successfully, we will start to open up for the 48×30 version of the machine as well as the extension kits. This is expected to happen at the end of February.
There are still a couple more kinks to work out with the larger X-axis, such as:
Longer wiring or wiring extensions for the motor, router, and inductive sensors
Adapters for using the original X-axis with the new rail and nut design
Development for these parts still needs to happen. Based on my estimates, I expect we will be able to ship the first extension kits out sometime in May.
We’ll be putting out more details as we continue with the development.
An example project sent in by Andy Mctaggart, one of our beta testers
Pending LongMill orders
If you placed an order for the original version of the LongMill and you’re in the queue here, we are working on packing and shipping your order. We have been delayed in shipping the remaining LongMill orders as the couplers which were estimated to arrive on December 30, 2021 have been delayed. Due to the delay, we have ordered a rush batch of couplers which are expected to arrive around Jan 12th, and shipping for LongMills will be temporarily halted until the couplers arrive.
We’ve sent customers who are expected to be affected by this delay emails over the holidays to let them know ahead of time. We are currently assessing estimated delivery times for the remaining orders and will provide customers with updates soon. We’ll be updating order statuses on our Forum and our new Order Status page.
Response times for customer service (emails, tickets, and phone calls)
We have been overwhelmed with emails, tickets, and phone calls from customers, especially as we get caught up with messages that have come in over the past week while our offices were closed. We are working hard to respond to all of our customers, however, it may take longer than usual to get back to everyone. Thank you for everyone’s patience.
COVID situation
COVID 19 cases in the Waterloo region have seen a large increase in recent weeks. We recently had one of our employees coming back from vacation test positive for COVID 19. Fortunately, they were not exposed to everyone else at the shop as they tested positive before they came back to work, but it feels that a potential outbreak in our workplace becomes more and more likely as the pandemic becomes more severe.
To help keep our employees safe, we are pushing more of our staff to work from home. We are continuing to work to help set more of our staff to work from home and reduce the number of people at our office.
We continue to ask folks that are picking up orders from our office to stay inside their vehicles for pick-ups instead of attempting to enter our building without permission.
Lead times for LongMills and LaserBeams
We continue to wait for parts to arrive for the LongMill, LongMill MK2, and LaserBeam kits and ship products out as materials come in and get processed. We’ve created a new system for people to see the status of their order and see where they are in line for shipping.
Doing customer service when lead times are long for your products is particularly challenging for a number of reasons, including:
Folks are antsy about when they are going to get their machine, especially since they spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars on something from a random company on the internet (us)
It’s hard to keep track of when the order was placed and when it’s supposed to show up, as well as remember the estimated delivery time that was promised
There’s a lot of anticipation and excitement built up, which quickly turns into frustration when there are delays
Folks want to get their things to line up with their personal lives, such as with holidays and vacation time
We made some mistakes in terms of communication and setting expectations with our customers on when their machines would get delivered. For example, we said that we could ship a certain number of machines per day, so customers were expecting us to be shipping that number every day. However, because the number we can ship is limited to other factors, such as parts availability and the number of machines that the couriers can take that day, we were not clear on the fact that the number that we said we could ship was not always the number that we actually shipped. Some of our customers were calculating the number of days they would be waiting to get their machine based on the best-case scenario.
More realistically, customers should be planning their delivery based on the number of weeks that we advertised on our order page at the time the order was placed. Typically, the lead time will be stated as a range of weeks, such as 4-6 weeks.
The second mistake was how I sent the email out about the delay on the couplers. As some folks may know, the shipment of couplers that were slated to arrive on Dec 30, 2021, but was delayed until the middle of January. I emailed customers that this may affect the delivery time of their order. This email was only sent out to a small handful of customers who would potentially see that their orders would ship outside of the initial lead time that was promised, however, customers who the delay would not be affected also were upset that delays were happening, even though it would not affect the delivery time of their order as it is scheduled to ship later.
Our team is working to find new ways to improve transparency and communication with customers, but in the meantime, we’ve created a simple auto-updating list for new orders.
Our goal with this system is:
Customers can see what the status of their order is at any time, reducing the need to contact us directly about the order
They can see what the lead time was and how much time had elapsed, providing clarity on what delivery time was promised and if we are meeting them
Creating this system was actually a bit eye-opening as well. Given how much pressure we were putting on ourselves to ship quickly and manage customers with high expectations, we were feeling that we were always missing shipping deadlines. Now that we can visually see how much time had passed, it appears that we’ve been shipping almost all of our LongMills within our estimated times.
*Very important: If you are a customer looking to order a LongMill this month, please read this part carefully.
Due to low stock and high demand, our lead times for the LongMill are now extended to 4-6 weeks. New orders will not ship before Christmas. We are now limiting stock and customers may not be able to order once we go out of stock on our machines. A pre-order page for the LongMill MK2, the new version of the LongMill is scheduled to be available at the end of December, and orders for the LongMill MK2 will ship at the start of February. The new LongMill will have adjusted pricing that will be released at a later date, but are estimated to be around $1800CAD for the 30×30 version.
If you are interested in learning more about the differences between the MK2 and the original version of the LongMill, please read our development posts from our blog here: https://sienci-upgrade3.cospark.io/?s=longmill+MK2. More information will come soon.
Because of our shortage of parts, new orders (starting Dec 10, 2021) will start to use some of the parts that may have cosmetic defects on gantry plates and rails which do not affect the overall performance and use of the machine. We expect most customers to not even notice the cosmetic defects. All machines will come with the same high quality customer service and technical support, as well as the standard 90 day warranty.
Also, not all parts will have a cosmetic defect, as you may, for example, have a cosmetically perfect set of rails and one gantry that has a scratch. All parts are carefully inspected before being packed and shipped.
Some examples of scratches, dents, and other cosmetic dings
Every rail we ship out gets checked for:
Dimensional accuracy
Dings and dents that may impede with the travel of the v-wheels along the edge
Cosmetic damage
While the first two criteria are critical to making sure that the LongMill works, cosmetic damage along the sides and inside of the rail does not impact the performance and functionality of the machine. Rails that were rejected due to cosmetic damage but not from the first two criteria would be used in this version of the machine.
Every gantry plate gets checked for:
Paint defects, such as chipping and orange peel
Gouges and scratches
Uneven paint
Plates, such as the one shown above show orange peeling and would be rejected in production. This may be caused by contamination on the plate surface before coating, but overall does not affect the use and performance of the machine.
Why did we make this decision?
Our goal is to use the remaining stock of rails and gantries to bridge the gap between when we’ll be able to restock on parts again in January and February. Between each batch of production, we’ve kept our functional but cosmetically imperfect parts in storage. Using up these parts will help us use excess materials and clear out space for new inventory, as well as keep our lead times lower.
This is actually not the first time we’ve done this. On some rare occasions where we run out of a part and are waiting to restock, we’ve asked customers if we can provide them with imperfect parts, and all of our customers preferred to get their machine a week or two earlier, rather than wait till the new parts arrived.
Although we have considered remaking or repainting the rest of the parts, this would extend the lead time significantly, as new parts can take upwards of 8 weeks to produce. Instead, we figured we would let the customer know that some of their LongMill parts may be cosmetically imperfect, and let them make the decision at purchase.
LongMill MK2 Production
We’ve slowly started to gather parts for the production of the LongMill MK2. In our last update, we talked about the extended lead times for the MK2’s aluminum rails. It just happens that Almag was able to rush order the rails and have them dropped off a lot earlier than expected. Yay!
On top of this, we have also received full or partial shipments of:
Linear guides
Lead screws
Fasteners
Delrin nuts
Z motor mounts
Drag chains
There are still a lot of parts that are in transit and production, such as:
Control boards
Power supplies
Motors
Couplers
Packaging materials
We are crossing our fingers that these parts will arrive by the end of December or early January.
Holiday schedule and office closures
Please note that our offices will be closed from Dec 24th to Jan 3rd. We will be back in action and shipping again on Jan 4th.
If you have any orders that need to be shipped out before the holidays, please place your orders before Dec 23rd so that they can be shipped out before we close.
These past couple of weeks has been a bit stressful, as we continue to deal with delays in supply chain. I’m happy to announce that the new control boards that we’d been waiting on in the last update have finally arrived and we have started shipping machines again. We expect to get through the backlog over the next couple of weeks.
We also now have touch plates back in stock as well.
The end of Batch 5 is coming
We are quickly reaching the end of Batch 5, and expect to be out of stock on Batch 5 machines in around 3 to 4 weeks. Customers should expect lead times for machines to get much longer as we work on parts for Batch 6 to finish.
If you aren’t familiar, we build machines in batches. In this case, Batch 5 is 1000 machines.
In the meantime, there are a few things we can continue to do, such as extending Batch 5 by balancing the inventory and using all of the leftover parts and hardware to keep making kits beyond 1000 machines. This could also mean pulling inventory coming in for Batch 6 to use for Batch 5, as we wait for all of the Batch 6 parts to arrive.
Once we get closer to the end of Batch 5, customers should expect lead times to go up, possibly to 4-6 weeks.
Current supply chain and production issues
One of the major hurdles we’re currently dealing with is the long lead times with aluminum extrusions. With our current manufacturer, we’ve jumped from a 2 week lead time to 13 week lead time between September and November, meaning that our order for rails placed this month is expected to complete sometime between January and February. I’ve “rush ordered” these parts so that we try to have them in stock by the start of January, but this all comes down to scheduling at the press. I’ve also reached out to other presses in the area, but most have even longer lead times.
To account for the unstable lead times, we’ve been working on installing our own cutting and tapping set up to cut and tap our own rails. This should allow us to have more control over the lead times, as we don’t have to worry about the extra machining time that the manufacturers need to have added on top of the total production time.
Our new saw
In other news, we are likely going to see gaps in shipping based on shipping delays. For example, although we have allocated the v-wheels for the machines in Batch 5 for pending orders, the batch that we are waiting for to be able to complete the batch have been delayed in transit for about 2 weeks. Although I expect to see the wheels before we finish shipping the pending orders, any additional delays may cause a gap in shipping again as well for new customers.
Lastly, lead times for cardboard packaging have gone from a few weeks to around 10 weeks now, which means that we’ve started working early on manufacturing the packaging for Batch 6 machines.
All in all, although we are doing our best to keep production going, customers should expect longer lead times on LongMills.
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